Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • Prayer Cycle
      • Introduction to the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle
      • Day 1 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Cathedral
      • Day 2 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Scriptures
      • Day 3 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Saints
      • Day 4 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Spiritual Directors
      • Day 5 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Icon
      • Day 6 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Sacrament
      • Day 7 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Liturgy
      • Prayer Cycle Leader Resources
    • About the Abbey
    • About Christine Valters Paintner
    • About John Valters Paintner
    • About the Wisdom Council
    • Monk Manifesto
    • Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks
    • Subscribe to Our Love Notes
    • Website privacy notice
  • Books
    • Breath Prayer:
      An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred
    • Sacred Time:
      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
    • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems
    • Earth, Our Original Monastery:
      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
    • The Soul's Slow Ripening:
      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
    • The Wisdom of the Body:
      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
    • Illuminating the Way:
      Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
    • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
    • Eyes of the Heart:
      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
    • The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
    • Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated & Explained
    • Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
    • Awakening the Creative Spirit:
      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
    • Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness
  • Poetry | Art | Music
    • Music + DVD
    • Poetry by Christine Valters Paintner
    • Poetry Videos
    • Dancing Monk Icons
    • Other Art Collaborations
      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
      • Saints & Animals art series by David Hollington
      • Sacred Time art series by Alexi Francis
      • Mary block print art series by Kreg Yingst
  • Programs
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
      • Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color (Book Club – March 2021)
      • God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with Teresa of Avila (Book Club – February 2021)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • Sky, Sun, Sea, & Stone:
        Celtic Spirituality and Creative Writing
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • Self-Study Online Spiritual Retreats
      • Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert:
        An Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen
      • Dreaming of the Sea:
        A women’s discernment journey through the story of the Selkie
      • Earth, Our Original Monastery
        A Companion Retreat to the Book (SELF-STUDY)
      • Exile and Coming Home:
        An Archetypal Journey through the Scriptures
      • Eyes of the Heart:
        Photography as Contemplative Practice
        (Companion retreat to the book)
      • Honoring Saints and Ancestors:
        Online Retreat for the Season of Remembrance
      • Lectio Divina:
        The Sacred Art of Reading the World
      • A Midwinter God:
        Making a Conscious Underworld Journey (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea & Stone:
        A Creative Retreat with the Elements (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Seasons:
        A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
      • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
        Eight Practices for the Journey Within
        (a companion retreat to the book)
      • The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seekers of the Sacred (a companion retreat to the book)
      • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
      • Watershed Moments
        in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
      • Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist:
        A 12-Week Companion Retreat to The Artist's Rule
      • The Wisdom of the Body:
        A 10-Week Online Companion Retreat to the Book
      • The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact
Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Earth as Original Monastery

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

We are back after a monthlong break in our email newsletters. It is always good for us to have this sabbatical from our communications, to be able to turn inward a bit more and to give some time and energy to other projects.

We are thrilled to be launching our newest offering – a 7-day Prayer Cycle of morning and evening prayer on the theme of Earth as our monastery. Here is an excerpt from our Introduction:

Abbey of the Arts is a virtual monastery and global community of monks, artists, and pilgrims dispersed all over this beautiful globe. The Abbey was founded by Christine Valters Paintner in 2006 with a vision of supporting people to integrate contemplative practice and creative expression. In 2013 she and her husband John moved to Ireland and he joined her in co-shepherding this community. They are joined by a team of treasured Wisdom Council members who support this work with their own gifts.

We are not affiliated with any particular institution and open our doors to people from any denomination or none at all. We strive to create a place of welcome and hospitality where we might dialogue with one another and grow. Our spirituality is steeped in the rich Christian mystical tradition, and three strands of monasticism: desert, Celtic, and Benedictine, all of which profoundly influences our ways of praying.

We are an open and affirming community and strive to be radically inclusive. We delight in being joined by people like you, who are seeking to be monks in the world and artists of everyday life, seeking kindred spirits, a community committed to contemplative rhythms and creative expression.

Poetry is our nourishment.  Art inspires our souls.  We dance and sing for the joy of it.

Morning and evening prayer nourishes many monastic communities and we have integrated this rhythm of prayer into our live retreat and pilgrimage programs. Our participants expressed a hunger for a prayer cycle that could be used by community members no matter where they were, that reflected our values and emphasis.

We are thrilled to present you with the first week of our Abbey of the Arts Prayer Cycle which takes as its theme Earth as Original Monastery, inspired by Christine’s recent book. Nourishing an earth-cherishing consciousness is central to our vision and practice.

Each day you are invited to morning and evening prayer with the original cathedral, scripture, saints, spiritual directors, icon, sacrament, and liturgy. These prayers bring together the rich tradition of monastic prayer, the wisdom of ancient mystics, songs from our album compilations, embodied prayers to accompany each song, contemporary versions of the psalms, and poetry and blessings.

You are welcome to pray through on your own or with a group. We provide all of the written texts for seven days of morning and evening prayers in this free handout.  Duplication is permitted with attribution. The songs are available to purchase as a CD or mp3 download and the dances are available for purchase on DVD or streaming format.   Your purchases help to support our ability to offer these resources and continue to develop more weeks of the prayer cycle on different themes. This is a free resource but we warmly welcome donations to help us support the continued development of this work as we hope to eventually have four weeks of prayers created on different themes.

We will be creating and posting printable PDF versions of each day’s prayers as well as an audio podcast series coming in October which will guide you through each of the prayers with music. We also plan to create some leader resources for use in groups.

We hope that you will be inspired to create a regular rhythm of prayer in your daily life if you haven’t already and that you will include Abbey of the Arts as part of your experience. We are a global community, it will be beautiful to know we are all praying together for the renewal of Earth.

In addition to the Prayer Cycle, we are opening our Shop for the month of August and September where you can purchase a beautiful postcard book with art by David Hollington created for The Wisdom of Wild Grace. If you are in the U.S. you can also pre-order The Wisdom of Wild Grace – my second poetry collection – directly from me and it will be shipped to you from Paraclete Press in late September. There is a free gift when you order any 2 or more items – Sound & Stillness – which is a brand new album of me reading several of my poems.

Because of the pandemic we had to either postpone or cancel all of our fall 2020 live retreats and pilgrimages, but we have lots of wonderful online offerings available.

If you want to retreat together with kindred spirits in community, consider joining us this coming Saturday, August 15th on the Feast of the Assumption for an online mini-retreat on Mary, Queen of Heaven which I am leading with Betsey Beckman. We will explore Mary’s wisdom for these challenging times, especially how she might support us in calling forth our own inner sovereign.

We also have a 12-week online retreat starting September 7th called Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, and it is a companion retreat in community to my book The Artist’s Rule. This book is the core of my teaching around the integration between contemplative practice and creative expression and is always a wonderful experience. This will be the first time we are offering with weekly live webinar sessions led by me.

There will also be a repeat of the Writing as a Spiritual Practice mini-retreat I offered in July on September 5th(this second offering has just a few spaces left).

And if you would love to immerse yourself in an online weekend retreat over the Feast of St. Francis where I will draw on wisdom from my recent book and upcoming poetry collection, you are welcome to join us!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS – I published the poem “Lost” inspired by this current season of feeling disoriented in difficult days. You can read it at Pendemic.

PPS – I love this time of year in Ireland. We just passed the Celtic feast of Lughnasa (Imbolc in the southern hemisphere). Lughnasa is an ancient festival celebrating the time of harvest.

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Leave a Comment August 9, 2020

Upcoming Programs

Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
March 13, 2021
with Drs. Jamie Marich, Kellie Kirksey, and Christine Valters Paintner

Novena for Times of Unraveling
Becoming a Monk in the World

March 17-25, 2021
with Christine & John Valters Paintner, and Simon de Voil

Recent Reflections

  • More Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times ~ A Love Note From Your Online Abbess
  • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – March Video Discussion and Book Group Resources Now Available
  • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Call for Submissions – Monk in the World Guest Post Series
  • Hildy Tales 7: An Nead by John Valters Paintner

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